Major maritime insurers join initiative to reduce cargo fires

The Initiative, Safetytech Accelerator launched in February 2023, is a multi-year collaborative technology acceleration programme focused on reducing cargo fires and loss in maritime and its impact.

It is already supported by Anchor Partners Cosco Shipping Lines, Evergreen Line, HMM, Lloyd’s Register, Maersk, the Offen Group, ONE and Seaspan, which represent around 50% of the total liner shipping market.

The programme will help expedite the uptake of technology and best practice by identifying specific opportunities where technology can make a difference, shaping joint requirements, identifying technology solutions, undertaking trials, and developing best practices and recommendations. It has already started working on solution for early fire detection in cargo hold.

The UK P&I Club and TT Club are the first insurers to join the Initiative, joining the significant proportion of the world’s container carriers already involved in the open-innovation initiative.

“Fires on board container ships keep happening, with depressing regularity, often resulting in tragic loss of life and catastrophic damage to ship and cargo. A large proportion of these fires are completely preventable, and we find that losses could have been mitigated by better practices. This is an industry-wide problem that requires collaboration. The only way to improve safety is to work together, share ideas, and identify and utilise modern technological solutions,” said Stuart Edmonston, Loss Prevention Director at UK P&I Club.

“As an insurer of many elements of the container supply chain, we have long campaigned for improved certainty for classification, declaration and packing of cargo in containers,” commented Mike Yarwood, Managing Director of Loss Prevention at TT Club.

Global Containerships Segment Director at Lloyd’s Register (LR), and Chair of the Maritime Cargo Fire and Loss Initiative, Nick Gross said that the UK P&I and TT Club bring an insurers perspective to the initiatives work.

“We believe cross-industry collaboration around innovation is an essential component to reduce the incidence of large cargo fires and enhance the safety of seafarers and vessels. Together with the Anchor Partners we are already uncovering technologies and applications that have the potential to make significant progress to that goal," said Rich McLoughlin, CFLII Programme Director at Safetytech Accelerator.

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